Medical Assistance for Registered Workers (APB&OCWWB)

What is APB&OCWWB Medical Assistance?

Medical Assistance is one of the statutory welfare benefits given by the Arunachal Pradesh Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board (APB&OCWWB), which functions under the Department of Labour and Employment, Government of Arunachal Pradesh. The Board operates under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996, and funds the benefit from the cess collected on construction work in the state.

APB&OCWWB sanctions medical financial assistance to a registered worker who is hospitalised for five or more days because of a disease or an accident. The purpose is narrow and practical: a construction worker earns by the day, so a long hospital stay costs the household both the treatment bill and the lost wages. The medical assistance benefit is designed to cover part of that double loss.

Medical Assistance sits inside a package of 12 statutory benefits the Board provides to its registered workers and their family members, covering maternity, death, funeral, marriage, pension, housing, tools, education and cash awards alongside medical help.

How much does the Board pay?

The medical assistance rates published by APB&OCWWB are as follows.

Read together, a worker hospitalised for a short spell above five days receives Rs 2,000 plus Rs 100 for each extra day. Where an accident leaves the worker disabled, the day-wise component runs up to a ceiling of Rs 15,000, and a further amount of up to Rs 25,000 may be sanctioned on the basis of the percentage of disability assessed by the competent medical authority.

Medical Assistance is a one-time sanction against an episode of hospitalisation, not a monthly payment. A worker who is permanently disabled should look separately at the Board's disability pension of Rs 1,000 per month, and at the monthly pension of Rs 500 payable in cases of permanent disability caused by paralysis, leprosy, tuberculosis or an accident, along with an ex-gratia payment of not more than Rs 5,000 depending on the percentage of disability.

Who is eligible for medical assistance from APB&OCWWB?

You can claim if:

• You are a building and other construction worker within the meaning of the BOCW Act, 1996, working in Arunachal Pradesh.
• You are registered with APB&OCWWB and your membership is active on the date of application.
• You were hospitalised for five or more days because of a disease or an accident, or you were put in plaster at your residence for the equivalent period.

You are not eligible if:

• You are not registered with the Board. Registration comes first; the welfare benefits follow from it. An unregistered worker cannot apply for medical assistance directly.
• Your membership has lapsed or was not active on the date of application. The Board treats active membership as a condition precedent for every one of its statutory benefits.
• Your hospitalisation lasted fewer than five days. The five-day threshold is the defining condition of this particular benefit.
• You are not a construction worker, for instance a shop assistant, a domestic worker or a factory operative. Those occupations fall outside the BOCW Act and therefore outside this Board.

How to apply for APB&OCWWB medical assistance

1. Make sure your APB&OCWWB registration is active. If contributions are in arrears, clear them with the Registering Officer before filing the claim.
2. Collect your hospital records. The discharge summary or a hospital certificate showing the exact dates of admission and discharge, because the five-day threshold is checked from these dates.
3. Obtain a disability certificate from the competent medical authority if you are also claiming the additional disability assistance of up to Rs 25,000.
4. Fill the Board's medical assistance application form completely, and attach a copy of your registration or membership card and your bank passbook front page.
5. Submit the application to the Registering Officer of APB&OCWWB in your district or sub-division. This is the only accepted route; there is no online submission.
6. Note the acknowledgement, and follow up with the same Registering Officer for the sanction and the credit into your bank account.

What documents are required?

How to register with APB&OCWWB first

Medical assistance is available only to registered workers, so registration is the first step for anyone not yet on the Board's rolls. Registration is done with the Registering Officer of APB&OCWWB in the district or sub-division where you work. Once registered, the worker receives a registration card, and it is that card number which is quoted on every later benefit application; medical assistance, maternity benefit, death benefit, pension and the rest.

Keep the registration card safe and legible. Several of the Board's benefits ask for the original registration card rather than a photocopy, the death benefit and funeral assistance claims, for example, require the original card of the deceased worker.

What else can a registered worker claim?

Understanding the full benefit package helps a worker's family use the registration properly. APB&OCWWB's statutory benefits include:

• Maternity benefit; cash assistance of Rs 1,000 during the period of maternity, for registered women workers, payable for up to two daughters.
• Death benefit; Rs 50,000 to the nominee for natural death and Rs 1,00,000 for accidental death, provided the nominee's name was recorded on the registration card before the worker's death.
• Funeral assistance: Rs 1,000 to the nominee, paid along with the death benefit.
• Marriage assistance: Rs 10,000 for the marriage of a child of a registered worker, for daughters above 18 and sons above 21.
• Pension — Rs 500 per month old age pension after 60 with at least one year of membership, rising by Rs 10 every five years, and Rs 1,000 per month for differently abled beneficiaries.
• Housing advance; Rs 1,00,000 for purchase or construction of a house, for workers with at least five years of membership and at least 15 years of service left before superannuation, repayable with interest.
• Tools loan. A refundable Rs 15,000 for the purchase of tools, after at least three years of membership.
• Education assistance: Rs 15,000 to Rs 50,000 for up to two children; Rs 20,000 to Rs 50,000 where the child studies outside the state and Rs 15,000 to Rs 50,000 within the state, for technical and non-technical courses.
• Cash award: Rs 500, Rs 750 and Rs 1,000 for children of registered workers who top their district in the Class X and Class XII board examinations.

Why medical assistance claims get rejected

• Membership inactive on the date of application. The single most common reason across all Board benefits.
• Hospital stay shorter than five days, or dates that cannot be established from the records submitted.
• Incomplete application form, particularly a missing membership number or an unsigned declaration.
• No disability certificate where the additional disability amount is being claimed.
• Wrong office. The claim must go to the Registering Officer of the district or sub-division where the worker is registered.

Where to get help

• Registering Officer, APB&OCWWB, in your district or sub-division, the first and correct point of contact for registration, renewal, application forms and claim status.
• Department of Labour and Employment, Government of Arunachal Pradesh, for Board-level grievances that the district office cannot resolve.

Registration with APB&OCWWB and application for medical assistance are free of any agent fee. No middleman is needed to file a claim with the Registering Officer.

How to check your application status

APB&OCWWB does not run an online tracker for individual medical assistance claims, so status checking is a manual, office-led process rather than a portal login.

1. Keep your acknowledgement. When the Registering Officer accepts your medical assistance application, ask for a dated receipt or a diary/receipt number. This is the reference you will quote at every later follow-up, so do not lose it.
2. Wait out the Board's processing cycle first. Claims are usually examined in batches at the district office rather than one by one on the day they arrive, so calling within the first week rarely produces new information. Give it a few weeks before the first follow-up.
3. Visit or call the same Registering Officer's office where the claim was filed, quoting your registration/membership number and the acknowledgement or receipt number. Because the file physically sits in that office, only that office (not the state labour department headquarters) can tell you whether the claim is pending scrutiny, sent for verification of the hospital records, sanctioned, or returned for a correction.
4. Ask specifically what stage it is at: document verification, approval by the Board, or payment processing, since each stage has a different likely wait and a different fix if something is missing.
5. Check your bank account once the office confirms sanction. Medical assistance is credited to the bank account recorded against your registration, so a sanctioned but not-yet-received payment is usually a bank detail mismatch rather than a rejected claim, and the Registering Officer can correct the account number on file.
6. Escalate only after the local office. If the district Registering Officer's office gives no clear answer after repeated visits, take the matter up with the Department of Labour and Employment, Government of Arunachal Pradesh, which oversees the Board, rather than approaching any other department.

Because there is no SMS alert or online dashboard for this benefit, the practical rule is to always follow up in person or by phone with the exact office where the application was submitted, and to keep the acknowledgement slip until the money is credited.